Almost 90% of people use their personal vehicle to travel to their place of work, far dwarfing any other mode of transport, survey results published by the National Statistics Office shows.

89% of 174,411 trips done in a single day to go to people’s main place of work were done by people’s personal vehicles, while the bus was the preferred mode of transport by only 3.7% of commuters.

The dominance of the personal vehicle as the preferred mode of transport was prevalent across all scenarios which the survey accounted for: 82.8% used it for a trip home; 77.9% used it to go to an educational institutional or transport someone to such an institution; 79.5% used it to go shopping or for a personal errand; and 85.9% used it for other trips such as recreational ones, medical trips or to visit a friend.

The survey revolved around a specific Travel Day which was selected to be Wednesday 17 of November 2021. This day was selected by Transport Malta to represent a typical day of travel across Malta and Gozo. This day was chosen as there were no national events, national holidays or other out-of-the-ordinary occurrences such as school closures.

The weather on Travel Day was favourable to normal travel patterns, with a temperature high of 20° and a low of 18° Celsius, with no rainfall and southwest winds at an average wind speed of 11mph.

There were no major roadworks carried out during Travel Day, except for those in the town of Ħal Luqa in the Southern Harbour district. This day therefore enabled the gathering of valuable data which represents a snapshot of people’s current travel habits to establish future transportation requirements, the NSO said.

The figures showed that only 10% of Malta’s households – equivalent to 20,294 – did not have access to a vehicle, with the majority of those residing in the Northern Harbour and Southern Harbour districts.

The total number of persons over the age of 14 who travelled on the designated Travel Day in 2021 amounted to 255,232, representing a share of 57.7 per cent.

On 17 November 2021, a total number of 638,456 trips were made, with persons between 25 and 44 years of age accounted for 43.1 per cent of all trips.

The morning rush – between 6am and 9am – was the most popular commuting period, with a total of 218,360 trips taking place, , followed by that of between 15:00 and 18:00 with a total of 169,160 trips.

The most common trip purpose on the selected Travel Day was that of commuting (42.2 per cent), followed by trips whose purpose was going to a place of education (11.6 per cent) and shopping (9.3 per cent).

The data showed that 89% of work commutes were done with a personal vehicle, with 4.3% choosing to walk and just 3.7% choosing to use the bus.  A further 3% used other modes of transport.

Education and escort education trips were highest in L-Imsida with 10,810 trips followed by Raħal Ġdid and In-Naxxar. Birkirkara was the top destination for work related trips, registering 12,186 trips, followed by L-Imsida and Valletta.

On the other hand, Il-Mosta, Birkirkara and Ħal Qormi were the top localities for shopping and personal errand trips, with 7,682, 5,154 and 3,776 trips respectively.

For trips going to main place of work, a personal vehicle was also the most common mode of transport chosen (89.0 per cent), while 3.0 per cent chose other modes of transport. 77.9 per cent of trips going to a place of education and escort education were made using a personal vehicle, followed by the use of a bus (11.7 per cent), while 3.9 per cent were made by the use of organised school transport.

The number of bus users on Travel Day was of 20,465, who were predominantly females (51.2 per cent), and 40.5 per cent were of 15 to 24 years of age. 87.6 per cent of the bus users were Maltese nationals and 40.8 per cent purchased the Standard ticket type. The number of trips by bus amounted to 34,679 and the main purposes for bus trips were trips taken for going home (40.6 per cent), followed by bus trips taken for main place of work (19.4 per cent) and trips to go to a place of education (16.5 per cent).

Trips analysed by district of origin showed that the highest average time to walk to the nearest bus stop was registered in both the Southern Harbour and Northern districts, at 6.4 minutes. However, the Northern Harbour district registered the longest average waiting time for the bus, at 13.3 minutes, followed by the Northern district, at 13.0 minutes.

Furthermore, bus trips which ended in the Southern Harbour and Northern districts recorded the longest average walking time from the bus stop to the destination, at 6.8 and 6.3 minutes respectively.

The main concerns of persons residing in districts in the Malta region on public transport were mainly that the bus is not punctual, followed by the concern that the bus takes too long to reach its destination and is inconvenient.